The searing pain in my badly injured left hand pressed deep into my joints.
It pulsed in sharp, agonizing spasms, as if countless needles were piercing my flesh without end.
Whenever I unconsciously moved my fingers, the pain flared at once.
It traveled along my wrist and shot up toward my elbow.
It was not merely a surface ache.
Deep inside, every muscle fiber, every piece of bone, and every blood vessel seemed to have been torn apart and crushed.
Although abundant Holy Power flowed through my veins, slowly healing and regenerating every layer of flesh, the agony was still enough to bring anyone to their knees.
The Holy Power felt like streams of warm water winding through my body, patiently mending the damage.
Yet the healing process was far from gentle.
Everywhere the power passed, it brought with it a sensation that was both burning hot and bone-chilling cold.
It was as if my hand were being set ablaze, only to be plunged into glacial ice the next moment.
I leaned my back against a cold basalt outcrop and squeezed my eyes shut.
My focus remained fixed on regulating the warm current of Holy Power around my wrist.
The rough, rigid surface of the stone pressed its sharp edges through my clothes and into my skin, creating an irritating prickling sensation.
Compared to the torment in my hand, however, that discomfort was hardly worth mentioning.
The damp chill of the underground earth seeped through my tattered monster-hide coat.
The stench of blood, stone dust, and scorched ore blended together into a heavy odor that clung stubbornly to the air.
With every breath I drew, my chest felt dry and parched.
The air inside the underground vault of the Holy Land was completely stagnant.
It was thick and trapped, carrying the cold breath of ancient stone and a silence that had endured for countless ages.
And yet, my mind had never been this clear.
I could hear the blood moving through my own body.
I could feel the heavy, deliberate thud of my heart.
I could even sense the faint drift of dust particles suspended in the air.
Every one of my senses had sharpened after the battle.
Exhaustion still weighed heavily on my limbs, but it could not overcome the icy clarity gradually spreading through my mind.
That was the state Mammon had once forced me to reach during my years of brutal training beneath the earth.
In the pitch-black silence of the Holy Land’s lower vaults, memories of the three years I had spent training underground with Mammon came flooding back.
I remembered the early days, when I was thrown into dark tunnels with no food, no water, no weapons, and not a single explanation.
Back then, I had been far too naive.
I used to believe that, as long as a person possessed enough strength and courage, they could overcome any danger.
I believed that a strong person had to keep charging forward, fight until the very end, and never allow themselves to retreat.
Mammon had used his whip to teach me just how foolish those thoughts were.
He had never taught me how to become a brave hero or a reckless warrior.
What he drilled into my head through lashes, severe injuries, and countless near-death experiences could be summed up in only two words: Survival.
Those two simple words became my first rule.
They also became the only absolute rule I had to remember.
Not victory.
Not honor.
Not revenge.
Survival.
He taught me how to slow my heartbeat in front of an enemy.
A racing heart led to ragged breathing, a loss of physical control, and an exposed position.
He taught me to observe the smallest changes in the surrounding environment.
I had to pay attention to the direction of the wind, the level of moisture, the echoes within the stone caverns, and even the slightest shifts in the color of the moss clinging to the walls.
He forced me to lie motionless for hours in freezing mud.
My only task was to distinguish the footsteps of an injured beast from those of a predator on the hunt.
He made me endure days of starvation.
Even while my body trembled from exhaustion, I was forced to keep my thoughts steady.
He had thrust me into places where a single mistake was enough to cost me my life.
And above all, he had taught me to cast aside my naivety and become a cold, calculating predator.
Back then, I had despised Mammon.
I hated his chilling voice, his contemptuous gaze, and the way he always looked at me as if I were nothing more than a weak, helpless pup that had not yet learned how to defend itself.
I used to think he simply wanted to crush the humanity within me.
I believed he wanted to turn me into a fearless tool.
But now, in the icy darkness of the Holy Land of Illusionary Metal, I understood the truth.
He had never been trying to strip away my emotions.
He had only wanted me to learn how to survive, even when my emotions were trying to drag me into the abyss.
From the rock fissure where I was sheltering, I looked deep into the heart of the valley.
The Holy Land of Illusionary Metal unfolded before me like a museum filled with both wonder and cruelty.
The valley stretched out below, submerged in a dim light.
I could not tell whether it came from natural illumination or from the lingering remnants of ancient magic left behind from a forgotten era.
Towering cliffs rose around the valley.
They were as sheer and immense as colossal walls worn down by time.
Across their stone surfaces, countless veins of silver and violet intertwined.
They brightened and dimmed in rhythm with the magical pulses moving beneath the earth.
In several places, lofty stone pillars pierced through a thin veil of mist.
Their peaks disappeared into the darkness above.
Broken stone bridges connected some of the cliffs.
They hung over chasms whose bottoms remained hidden from sight.
Ruined structures lay scattered across the valley floor.
Most of them had been swallowed by mineral deposits and ancient moss.
From a distance, the remains resembled the corpse of a once-glorious city that had perished countless ages ago.
I spotted clusters of Pure Spirit Stones glowing with a faint sunset hue.
Their light was not dazzling.
It simply spread a soft orange glow across the surrounding slabs of stone.
Yet in the dark depths of the earth, even that gentle light was enough to create a false sense of peace.
I had learned long ago that the most beautiful places were often the most dangerous.
Beside the spirit stone clusters were patches of Mist Quartz.
The crystals naturally condensed moisture from the air and turned it into fresh water.
Transparent droplets slowly formed across their surfaces.
They rolled down the crystals’ natural grooves before gathering in small puddles at the base of the stones.
From a distance, the puddles looked like pieces of shattered mirror reflecting the faint violet light.
Even so, I did not dare approach them carelessly.
Within the Holy Land, even a puddle that appeared completely harmless could belong to an ancient creature.
Some beasts needed neither claws nor fangs to hunt.
The moment someone touched the water, they could trace the disturbance in vital energy directly back to their prey.
I also saw bars of Ancient Ore filled with dense magical power.
They were embedded within the veins of stone.
Their surfaces were covered in natural symbols that resembled the written language of a civilization long since lost.
Every so often, flashes of blue-violet light ran through the ore.
Each pulse produced a faint cracking sound.
Yet every one of these miraculous treasures had its own guardian.
Each creature followed a distinct set of rules.
Those rules were no less ruthless than the laws governing the Ruby Monster or the Platinum Golem.
Some species hunted through scent and breath alone.
If an intruder breathed too heavily within their territory, they would immediately pinpoint the location and pounce.
Others drained the body heat of anyone unfortunate enough to enter their domain.
Flesh would freeze rapidly, then shatter like glass.
There were also creatures that never moved at all.
They remained motionless among piles of ore for hundreds of years, waiting for some greedy fool to walk straight into their jaws.
I crept slightly forward onto a high rock ledge and cautiously observed the battlefield below.
My body tensed at once.
Although my left hand still throbbed with pain, I forced myself to push the sensation aside.
At that moment, pain was nothing more than a signal.
It could not change the situation.
It could not help me survive.
If I allowed the pain to control me, I would lose the ability to judge the circumstances clearly.
A curtain of dust and shattered rock still swirled across the battlefield.
It churned like a murky gray storm.
Fragments of pulverized stone hovered in the air, reflecting the red and white glare of the battle within.
Whenever an explosion erupted, the entire valley flashed brightly for a brief moment.
Those sudden bursts of light revealed fresh cracks tearing across the ground.
They also exposed the rock walls trembling under the force of the impacts.
Inside the haze, thunderous crashes continued to shake the earth.
The sound did not travel only through the air.
It also moved directly through the stone beneath us.
The outcrop beneath my back vibrated faintly.
Small pebbles slipped down the cliff face.
Every impact placed a heavy pressure against my chest, as if the entire Holy Land were being dragged into an uncontrollable earthquake.
The Ruby Boar and the massive Platinum Monster were still locked in a frantic battle to the death.
Although I could not see them clearly, I could imagine the scene within the dust cloud.
On one side was the Ruby Boar, its magical power wild, brutal, and driven by instinct.
On the other was the Platinum Monster, releasing a cold yet scorching beam of energy.
Two completely opposing forces continued to collide without pause.
The Platinum Monster’s searing radiance struck against the Ruby Boar’s magical power, triggering a chain of explosions.
Each blast set off another series of detonations throughout the surrounding mineral veins.
Stone melted.
Ancient metal twisted out of shape.
Crystals buried deep beneath the earth shattered into countless razor-sharp fragments.
The dust from the ore was so thick that it was impossible to see through.
I could not even determine the exact positions of the two creatures.
I had no idea which side held the advantage.
I also could not tell how badly either of them had been injured.
In a situation like this, rushing into the battlefield would have been pure stupidity.
The moment I was caught in the crossfire, I could be pulverized before I even had the chance to draw a weapon.
Unable to see through the dust, I turned my head toward the dark silhouette drifting beside me.
“Mammon, can you use your divine sense to draw me a map of the terrain and show me their current positions?” Mammon hovered in midair.
His form was vague, as though it had been woven from black smoke.
The crimson light from the distant explosions reflected across his features.
It made his red eyes look even more menacing.
For a moment, I saw the familiar sneer rise at the corner of his lips.
He crossed his arms and flatly refused.
“I am your companion, not your living map.
If you want to survive by using someone else’s brain, you had better return to being that naive child on the Heavenly Realm.
The Lower Realm has no place for people who are too lazy to think.” His voice was not loud, but every word cut clearly through the thunderous explosions.
It reminded me of the countless times I had made the wrong decision simply because I had waited for someone else to show me the way.
I remained silent.
I felt neither anger nor the urge to argue.
If this had happened in the past, I might have talked back.
I might have tried to find an excuse and prove that the situation was too dangerous, or that Mammon could easily help but had deliberately chosen to stand aside.
But now, I understood that arguing would not change reality.
His refusal reminded me that I had to rely entirely on myself.
I lowered my body and pressed my back firmly against the stone.
Then I began analyzing the situation.
First, there was the terrain.
The rock fissure where I was hiding lay on the northwestern slope of the valley.
It was high enough above the battlefield to give me a clear view, but not so high that I would immediately attract attention.
To my left was a pile of collapsed rocks.
It could serve as cover if necessary.
To my right were narrow stone caverns.
Visibility inside them was limited, but they were ideal places to hide.
The battlefield stretched out in front of me, buried beneath the dust.
Behind me stood a nearly vertical cliff face.
If the battle spread to this area, I would have no route of retreat.
The deeper one traveled toward the center of the Holy Land, the more valuable the treasures became.
However, the density of high-tier monsters also increased.
For an injured person like me, charging into the center would be no different from seeking death.
To survive, I had to know my own limits.
I could not allow greed to turn me into a corpse lying among piles of ore.
The treasures at the center might be priceless, but they were not worth trading my life for.
My body had not yet recovered.
My left hand still could not exert force normally.
Although my Holy Power was abundant, it still needed time to repair the damage completely.
I decided to adopt a stealthy approach.
I would move carefully along the rock fissures at the outer edge of the Holy Land.
The treasures around the perimeter were lower in grade and more scattered.
Even so, they were at least within my reach and within the limits of what I could control.
The outer rim was also less likely to contain overwhelmingly powerful monsters.
If I remained cautious, I could gather resources while waiting for my wounds to heal.
I was no longer the person who blindly charged forward.
Every step had to be measured.
Every strike had to serve a purpose.
Caution was not cowardice.
Sometimes, knowing when to step back was the most reliable way to continue moving forward.
After hours of patiently crawling through narrow stone passages and slipping past the rockslides caused by the earlier explosions, I ducked into a small stone alcove along the cliff face.
The journey had been extremely difficult.
Some sections of the cave were barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through sideways.
Loose gravel kept falling from the ceiling, scraping across my shoulders and back.
Whenever my left arm accidentally brushed against the cavern wall, pain surged through me again.
It caught my breath in my throat.
I had to grit my teeth and suppress every sound.
In those dark tunnels, noise could become a death sentence.
A single quiet groan might attract the attention of a creature lurking nearby.
So I could only swallow the pain and continue moving inch by inch.
The space inside the alcove was so cramped that I could barely stretch out my body.
The ceiling was low and covered with thin strands of mineral.
They looked like roots hanging down from the stone.
Every so often, a drop of pale gray liquid fell from them.
Each drop struck the stone floor with a tiny clicking sound that echoed through the small cave.
I sat down and leaned my back against the rock face.
Then I tried to steady my breathing.
Beneath a layer of decayed ore dust, my eyes caught sight of an ancient monster-hide pouch.
It had long since fossilized.
The pouch blended almost perfectly into the ground.
If not for the faint purple shimmer beneath the dust, I probably would have overlooked it.
The surface was hard and rough.
Lines covered it in patterns that resembled the scales of a creature that had been dead for ages.
Part of the strap had rotted away, but the main body remained strangely intact.
I reached out with my right hand and slowly wiped away the stone dust.
My movements were careful and deliberate.
No trap activated.
No roar echoed through the cave.
There was no abnormal magical pulse, either.
Even so, I waited a little longer before opening the pouch.
The silence inside the cave made the waiting feel heavy.
I could hear my own breathing.
I could feel my heartbeat gradually slowing.
Inside me, vigilance existed alongside a faint sense of anticipation that I could not quite name.
After everything I had just endured, I needed something capable of changing the situation.
I needed something useful enough to compensate for my current injuries.
I did not dare hope for too much.
In places like this, hope often made people lower their guard.
Yet when I finally opened the pouch, my gaze froze.
Inside was a set of weapons containing exactly thirteen daggers.
They were arranged neatly in a row.
All thirteen daggers were identical in size, design, and balance.
They lay side by side without touching, despite having been buried beneath decayed ore for countless years.
Each blade radiated a mystical violet hue.
The color was as deep as the night, yet it gleamed with the sharpness of metal.
That shade of violet was unlike any gemstone I had ever seen.
It was neither brilliantly bright nor simply dark.
Within the purple surface, a faint light seemed to move slowly.
It reminded me of a river of stars trapped inside the body of the blade.
I stared at them in silence.
After all the dangers I had faced, what I had discovered was a set of thirteen daggers.
They were compact and refined.
They did not possess the overwhelming presence of massive swords or brightly glowing weapons.
Yet that very stillness made me uneasy.
Truly dangerous things rarely needed to display their power.
I used my right hand to draw one of the daggers from the pouch.
The blade was lighter than I expected, but it did not feel fragile.
Its weight settled perfectly in my palm, making every movement feel stable.
I rotated my wrist and tested the dagger as it swept through the air.
There was no sound of cutting wind.
There was no ordinary metallic vibration, either.
The dagger moved through the air so smoothly that it left almost no trace behind.
For a moment, I felt as though it was not cutting through space at all.
It seemed to dissolve into the surrounding darkness instead.
I tightened my grip around the hilt and felt an icy chill seep into my palm.
That coldness was different from the chill of the earth.
It traveled straight through my skin and flesh.
It passed through my veins before reaching the very bone.
My right hand stiffened for a moment.
An unfamiliar sensation crawled through my body.
It felt like both a warning and an invitation.
I did not know what material the daggers had been made from.
I did not know who had forged them or why they had been preserved inside a fossilized monster-hide pouch.
But my instincts told me that these were no ordinary weapons.
Deep down, I understood that I had just found something capable of changing the situation.
Not because the daggers were guaranteed to be stronger than every enemy.
Not because I already knew how to use them.
They suited my current condition.
I was injured.
I could not sustain a direct confrontation for long.
What I needed was speed, silence, and the ability to kill an opponent before they had time to react.
These violet daggers were still a mystery, but they might provide me with exactly those advantages.
I looked down at my left hand, still wrapped in Holy Power.
Pale light continued to weave patiently through the wound.
The pain had not disappeared, but it had eased slightly.
It was not enough for me to fight comfortably.
At the very least, however, it was enough for me to keep moving.
With Holy Power silently repairing my wound, a sharp survival instinct guiding my thoughts, and a mysterious set of violet weapons in my possession, I was ready for the next step.
I secured the pouch at my waist.
The thirteen daggers weighed almost nothing, but their presence changed my state of mind.
Before this, I had only been trying to survive in an unfamiliar land.
Now, I possessed a new possibility, even though I had no idea where it would lead me.
I raised my head and looked toward the deep black gates ahead.
They stood at the far end of the valley, tall and silent among the ruined structures.
The surface of the gates reflected no light.
They were so dark that they seemed capable of swallowing every color around them.
Faint violet lines ran along both sides of the gate frame.
They were the exact same shade as the daggers I had just found.
From this distance, I could not see what lay beyond the gates.
Only a cold draft continuously flowed through the gap between them.
It carried the scent of ancient stone, metal, and something deeper.
Something that kept my instincts on constant alert.
I did not know where the gates led.
I also did not know whether treasure, monsters, or a trap capable of ending my life awaited me on the other side.
Yet this time, I no longer felt the vague dread I once had.
Fear still existed.
It moved through every breath and kept my muscles tense.
However, it no longer made me want to run.
Instead, it kept me sharp.
It reminded me that danger lay ahead and that a single mistake could render all my efforts meaningless.
The naivety of my past had been completely washed from my eyes.
I was still human.
I could still feel pain.
I could still feel fear.
I could still hesitate when facing death.
But I was no longer someone who would allow those emotions to dictate my actions.
I stood up and slowly checked the pouch at my waist.
Then I wrapped my right hand securely around the hilt of the first violet dagger.
In the deep darkness of the Holy Land of Illusionary Metal, I began walking toward the black gates.